


A New Prototype

by BlackBirdAolen



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Alternative Chain of Events, Blackwatch, Gen, Mercer Virus, New Strain, Virus, alternative universe, blacklight - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 20:58:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4152720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBirdAolen/pseuds/BlackBirdAolen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Events transpired a little differently, when the new prototype was unleashed by Blackwatch...</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://ask.fm/BlackBirdAolen">Got a fanfic idea for me?</a><br/><a href="http://cheroshseiphar.deviantart.com/">My deviantART - full of original fiction.</a><br/><a href="http://blackbirdaolen.tumblr.com/">Snippets and ramblings on my tumblr.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Prototype

Alex had responded to Dana’s call right away when he had heard the words “Infected” and “urgent”. Usually, she called him to give him brief updates on movements of the Blackwatch, and on some other information, he couldn’t access (which was rare), but on the whole, it had been rather calm in the past few months. Almost eerily quiet. And that had come to an abrupt stop when he had heard that apparently, Blackwatch had engineered something new. Alex was ever cautious of what the scientists with Blackwatch could come up with, but apparently, even his caution hadn’t been enough.

“There you are, Alex.” Dana sounded relieved, but also still tense. Alex could sense that it was something of utmost importance, otherwise, Dana wouldn’t have contact him in such a hurry. She even almost had neglected the usual security protocol they went through before contacting one another. It was to protect her, and her work from the shadows. “It’s bad. It’s really, really bad.”

She typed at a rather hasty speed, and pulled up the file of a grim looking, dark-skinned soldier. The man was James Heller, ex-soldier, recently returned from a deployment. A first cursory glance didn’t reveal anything that would have alarmed Dana. Alex leaned closer, studying what was noted down in the file. Heller apparently had fought with a severe case of PTSD, but as far as the official report went, he had been entered into a therapeutic program, and from that, everything should have been well.

“It’s the inofficial stuff worrying, you, right?” Alex looked at Dana, who was visibly shuddering. “Is it really that bad?”

Dana nodded and pulled up the classified Blackwatch information she had been able to dig up, with some help from Alex, of course. “They admitted him into one of the Blackwatch controlled hospitals. From there, he vanished two months ago. Recently, a new entry was made into the file. It talks about him having gone through a rapid evolution. You don’t need rocket science to figure out what they are talking about.”

Alex gritted his teeth. This really was bad. Heller, from what he had seen so far, was far from cured from his PTSD. If anything, the change into an Infected, still controlled by Blackwatch, should have worsened his condition considerably. This was nothing short of a nightmare. A soldier, trained to kill on sight, with PTSD triggered by a heavy attack from his enemies he barely had escaped, and now the added pressure of having become a living virus, was a vision from Hell. Blackwatch had kept this under the wraps for a long enough time to warrant an entry Alex noted at the bottom of the file.

Heller strain of the Mercer virus. Estimated power to exceed Mercer virus.

“They want to get the infected of New York back under their control.” Alex was surprised at himself, and at the calm demeanour he could show in the face of such information. It was not really that much of a mind-boggling step. Blackwatch wanted to control the infected for themselves, and doing so required taking this kind of control from him. Now, the choice of a soldier like Heller seemed much less risky and idiotic, and rather brilliant, in a perverse way. “They want Heller to become a pawn in their game. But they’re risking everything with that.”

“If they can’t control it, they want to destroy it. Easy as that.” Dana had clenched her hands into fists, visibly disgusted at the thought that Blackwatch would resort to such means. “Do you think that Heller will be dangerous?”

“He will be.” Alex chuckled without humour. “He was, after all, already trained to kill. As soon as Blackwatch found a way to brainwash him into being completely comfortable with being an Infected, and being a danger to everything he ever possibly loved, he will become more dangerous than the toughest Hunters amongst the infected.”

Dana still didn’t look quite convinced, but she at least appeared to be calmer. Alex remained silent, waiting for her to say something. He knew the expression that had come across Dana’s face. She was trying to come up with something, not necessarily a solution, but a way of rationalizing what they had seen right now. It was a feat of hers that managed to calm Alex even on the worst of days. Even when possessing the knowledge of hundreds of people, that didn’t mean that he was omniscient.

“So, let’s assume they manage to tell Heller that you are the bad guy, and he’s essentially the hero.” Dana kneaded her fingers while talking, her eyes on the picture of Heller still on her screen. “What are we supposed to do?”

“That is a good question.” Alex rubbed the back of his neck. “As of the moment, we have no idea about Heller or about the strain of the virus he is carrying. They could have kept him in containment for those whole two months and fed him god knows what. They would have had to, to at least sustain him. The strain inside of him could be a rather strong modification of the original Mercer virus, as they call it now. We know nothing of its properties, and how it will affect him in detail. That is the part we have to find out, without running into the Blackwatch or into Heller himself. It will be tough to do, but we have to operate on this. At higher risk than before, but it is a risk we need to take. If the Blackwatch was able to get a hold of all the infected, the world might look very, very dark in the near future.”

“It was bad enough when the Blackwatch hunted you, Alex.” Dana rubbed across her face. “I don’t know if I can go through this, too.”

Alex gently gripped his sister’s hands, smiling at her with a slightly strained expression. “It will be alright, Dana. We need to see this through, though. If we can’t stop Heller before he does something stupid, then we have a much bigger problem at our hands than we ever would have fathomed.”

 

 


End file.
